God or Me: One of Us Might Have to Go

I'm currently agnostic. There, I've said it. I've been such for a number of years, although in certain circles I'll discuss religion as if I still had solid faith there is a God. After all, I was raised in a WASPy family that attends a Pentecostal church and knows exactly how to phrase things such that they sound one way, even if they mean something else altogether. Not rocking the boat is like breathing in our family. We do it on autopilot. It costs me nothing...intellectually, anyway.

But I've known for some time that something has been missing. I've longed for some sort of spirituality. Should I explore Buddhism? Or Yoga? Or...nah...what seems to make most sense to me at the moment is to declare myself an athethist and see what happens.

Yes, given my position and passion, it seems natural that I should just turn to art for spirituality, but let's face it, looking for the spiritual in contemporary art is often like looking for a trenchcoat you like in your size at Century 21. Even if you find one, there's bound to be some imperfection in it that makes you shake your head and move on.

I thought about this on the train out to the quiet getaway we spent celebrating New Years this past weekend. I had printed out the introduction to Donald Kuspit's new book that artnet.com is publishing online, A Critical History of 20th Century Art. The very first paragraph gets to the heart of my conundrum:

"The real problem of modernity is the problem of belief," writes Daniel Bell, the sociologist and political theorist. "To use an unfashionable term, it is a spiritual crisis, since the new anchorages have proved illusory and the old ones have become submerged. It is a situation which brings us back to nihilism; lacking a past or a future, there is only a void."(1) Modern art, in all its seemingless limitless variety, presents itself as one solution to the problem, indeed, as some think, the only important solution. As Bell says, it has become a "substitute for religion,"(2) a spiritual antidote to social poisons, the esthetic alternative to moral nihilism. This view is seconded by the historian Jacques Barzun, who, discussing "the rise of art as religion" in the 19th century -- initially the equation of art and religion, and finally the substitution of art for religion(3) -- remarks that "Art. . . became the gateway to the realm of spirit for all those over whom the old religions have lost their hold. Most romantic artists needed nothing higher. Art was sufficient and supreme."(4) The poet Wallace Stevens adds: "The paramount relation between poetry and painting today, between modern man and modern art, is simply this: that in an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent or, if not disbelief, indifference to questions of belief, poetry and painting, and the arts in general, are, in their measure, a compensation for what has been lost."(5)

But are they? Compensation, I mean. Do poetry and painting replace the sense of comfort faith in a higher purpose/being provided pre-Modern man? Later in the text, Kuspit offers this:

[A]vant-garde art is essentially critique -- a ceaseless whirlpool of destablizing criticism, directed toward itself as well as the world. It involves, as Barzun says, a "deepening and spreading self-consciousness by analysis and corrosion" that destroys what it analyzes, and finally the self that does the analysis.(63) It tells the truth about the modern self -- modern self-consciousness -- and the dynamic modern world, but it undermines the spirit of both in the process of doing so, no doubt because, as Bell and Barzun suggest, secular critique knows no higher truth. It leaves itself homeless, which is finally to lose its sense of purpose, although, as I have suggested, it can also lead, unpredictably, to a sense of unique identity, that is, ground a new sense of self, or at least suggest the possibility of being uniquely oneself -- a radical subject for all one’s participation in and engagement with the objective world. [emphasis mine]

Kuspit's subject is a bit frustrating in that it is nearly impossible while discussing it not to bounce back and forth between the POV of the artist and the POV of the art viewer (assuming both that the artist is a product of his/her time AND a bellwether, but not easily differentiating when his point applies to how we view art and how it's made), but...

What this seems to be suggesting is that you have one of two choices in finding some way to prevent your modern self-consciousness from driving you mad: accept Faith or find your unique identity. This may account more than market strategizing for the seemingly frantic urge among artists to develop a unique vocabulary, IMO. Kuspit notes:

[S]ome theorists have argued that avant-gardism, which they understand as the artistic correlate of entrepreneurial capitalism, is simply a matter of change for the sake of change, difference for the sake of difference, novelty for the sake of novelty (novelty not being exactly purposeful innovation), as though that was what drove capitalist enterprise.

But earlier in his piece, he counters that assertion with what I think brings us full circle here (or locks us like an ouroboros in an self-destructive circle with ourselves):

The subliminal point of avant-garde innovation -- and in the history of 20th-century art it is the avant-garde innovators who made the spiritual as well as artistic difference, that is, who showed that to take an artistic risk was also to take a spiritual risk, that one ventured into unknown artistic territory to make spiritual discoveries -- is to express dissatisfaction with both, finally dismissing them as beside the larger spiritual point. Avant-garde innovation sheds social and artistic identity, working through them in a struggle to become self-identical -- convey a sense of unique, hard won selfhood, fulfilling what Erik H. Erikson calls "the promise of an assured wholeness."(12) It is the intimation of wholeness in a psychosocial situation in which wholeness seems impossible -- in which the avant-garde work of art is itself a vulnerable fragment of an inconceivable whole, as Adorno suggests(13) -- that makes avant-garde art peculiarly tragic, that is, all too human and poignantly modern, however grand its spiritual and artistic aspiration.

Some of my favorite pre-Modern artists were devout in their faith. So I like to believe it's possible to do both, have "faith" in the traditional sense AND become self-identical, but I'm not at all sure. None of my Modern heroes was clearly devout. The all pervasive "enlightened false consciousness" that defines the post-Modern era, this wink-wink-nudge-nudge cynicism that works so well in allowing us to go about our normal routine and earn a living, practically speaking, actually undermines our ability to do the same spiritually, it seems. It's one thing to go through the motions at one's job or socializing commitments, but to do the same in the context of religion defeats the purpose. If you have doubts but act as if you don't, you're bordering on blasphemy, no?

So, ironically, I find myself believeing, sincerely, that perhaps the only way to regain any meaningful spirituality is to reject the existence of God (or at least the working definitions of God currently available to me) and start with a clean slate. Which brings me back to looking for some avenue to explore to find what "higher purpose" may be out there that makes sense to me. Which brings me back to wondering why I'm not finding that in contemporary art. Which leaves me chomping at the bit for the next installment of Kuspit's book...

to be continued...